Hunters to Herders: Ancient Civilization Made Rapid Switch

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Bones unearthed from an ancient mound in Turkey suggest that
humans there shifted their diet from hunting to herding over just
a few centuries, findings that shed light on the dawn of
agriculture, scientists say.Agriculture began in the
Neolithic, or New Stone Age, about 11,500 years ago. Once-
nomadic groups of people settled down and began farming and
herding, fundamentally changing human society and how people
related to nature.

To discover more about the initial conditions underlying the
evolution of villages, an international team of scientists
investigated the site of Aşıklı Höyük, the earliest known
Neolithic mound in Cappadocia, in central Turkey. In this
volcanic
landscape, erosion carved soft rock into thin spires known as
"fairy chimneys." Settlers also used this malleable stone to
build cave dwellings and underground cities.

The mound, whose name means "ankle bone hill," stands 52 feet (16
meters) high. The oldest levels of the area span from about 8,200
to 9,000 B.C., predating the emergence of pottery in the region.
The mound formed as the result of people continually moving
materials such as mud and wood to the settlement for buildings,
fires and other purposes. Over centuries, the human-collected
debris raised the height of the settlement, with residents
adjusting their buildings accordingly. [ Image
Gallery: Stone-Age Burials in Africa ]

Layers of history

The research team, led by archaeologist Mihriban Özbaşaran at
Istanbul University, discovered the people of the oldest levels
of the site originally ate a broad diet of meat from creatures
that populated the plains and meadows along the Melendiz River.
This included diverse small animals, such as hares, fish,
turtles, hedgehogs and partridges, as well as larger prey such as
deer, boars, horse, goats, sheep, extinct wild oxen known as
aurochs, and the onager, also known as the Asian wild ass.

However, by 8200 B.C., the meat in the diet shifted
overwhelmingly to sheep and goats. These animals once made up
less than half of all skeletal remains at the site, but gradually
increased to 85 to 90 percent of these bones, with sheep bones
outnumbering goat remains by a factor of three or more. Young
male sheep and goats were selectively killed, probably for their
meat, leaving females and some males to breed more livestock.

Moreover, analysis of dung in the mound revealed that
plant-eating animals were
held captive inside the settlement, probably in between
buildings. Altogether, these findings suggest the people in this
area shifted from hunting to herding in just a few centuries.

The cultivation of grain may have played a major role in the move
from hunting to herding, said lead study author Mary Stiner, an
archaeologist at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

"If people become more sedentary to take advantage of grains,
they have a tendency to eat what's nearby, and the best and
largest kinds of game will get targeted first," Stiner told Live
Science. "Eventually, people will have to travel farther afield
to get large animals. The alternative is to raise animals
yourself."

In future studies, the researchers would like to examine the
consequences of holding animals captive in the settlement for
people.

"What advantages and problems did that bring?" Stiner said. "Did
their nutrition and health improve? Did they suffer
diseases that came from the livestock ? How did the people
reorganize their labor to make sure the animals were fed? What
kinds of structural modifications were made within the site to
protect and constrain these animals?"

Stiner, Özbaşaran and their colleagues detailed their findings
online today (April 28) in the journal Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences.